Just four days after the team and local black leaders signed the deal, hailing it as a historic breakthrough in county race relations, they agreed to kill it because Miami-Dade County Attorney Robert Cuevas said the pact would violate court rulings prohibiting governments from awarding contracts based on race.

(NAACP local president Victor) Curry went on to call the entire process ''disheartening, discouraging.'' He said he'd only been trying to make sure ``everyone can come to the table and walk away with something.''

But nothing is simple in Miami's ever simmering cauldron of race and politics.

That last part is an understatement in an area where the politics of Little Haiti and Little Havana are more akin to Little Chicago. I said last week when I first reported on the story that as long as the deal still allowed for competitive bidding among firms, it was a good idea. I'm also still pretty sure that the State of Florida awards a certain number of state contracts to women and minority owned businesses. Like the article implies this whole things reeks of the backroom dealing and payoffs so inherent in Miami politics.

If more people actually paid attention to the Marlins this entire stadium fiasco would be a national embarassment.

9 Comments

I think that's too narrow of a view. The neighborhood that it's going into is a primarily black one. It isn't just about race it's about making sure that at least some of the wealth stays in the community that has to house the damn place, instead of it all just flying back to Palm Beach or Hell or wherever it is that Jeffrey Loria lives.